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<title>Using as: MIPS Small Data</title>

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<a name="MIPS-Small-Data"></a>
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<a name="Controlling-the-use-of-small-data-accesses"></a>
<h4 class="subsection">9.27.4 Controlling the use of small data accesses</h4>

<a name="index-small-data_002c-MIPS"></a>
<a name="index-gp-register_002c-MIPS"></a>
<p>It often takes several instructions to load the address of a symbol.
For example, when &lsquo;<samp>addr</samp>&rsquo; is a 32-bit symbol, the non-PIC expansion
of &lsquo;<samp>dla $4,addr</samp>&rsquo; is usually:
</p>
<div class="smallexample">
<pre class="smallexample">lui     $4,%hi(addr)
daddiu  $4,$4,%lo(addr)
</pre></div>

<p>The sequence is much longer when &lsquo;<samp>addr</samp>&rsquo; is a 64-bit symbol.
See <a href="MIPS-Symbol-Sizes.html#MIPS-Symbol-Sizes">Directives to override the size of symbols</a>.
</p>
<p>In order to cut down on this overhead, most embedded MIPS systems
set aside a 64-kilobyte &ldquo;small data&rdquo; area and guarantee that all
data of size <var>n</var> and smaller will be placed in that area.
The limit <var>n</var> is passed to both the assembler and the linker
using the command-line option <samp>-G <var>n</var></samp>, see <a href="MIPS-Options.html#MIPS-Options">Assembler options</a>.  Note that the same value of <var>n</var> must be used
when linking and when assembling all input files to the link; any
inconsistency could cause a relocation overflow error.
</p>
<p>The size of an object in the <code>.bss</code> section is set by the
<code>.comm</code> or <code>.lcomm</code> directive that defines it.  The size of
an external object may be set with the <code>.extern</code> directive.  For
example, &lsquo;<samp>.extern sym,4</samp>&rsquo; declares that the object at <code>sym</code>
is 4 bytes in length, while leaving <code>sym</code> otherwise undefined.
</p>
<p>When no <samp>-G</samp> option is given, the default limit is 8 bytes.
The option <samp>-G 0</samp> prevents any data from being automatically
classified as small.
</p>
<p>It is also possible to mark specific objects as small by putting them
in the special sections <code>.sdata</code> and <code>.sbss</code>, which are
&ldquo;small&rdquo; counterparts of <code>.data</code> and <code>.bss</code> respectively.
The toolchain will treat such data as small regardless of the
<samp>-G</samp> setting.
</p>
<p>On startup, systems that support a small data area are expected to
initialize register <code>$28</code>, also known as <code>$gp</code>, in such a
way that small data can be accessed using a 16-bit offset from that
register.  For example, when &lsquo;<samp>addr</samp>&rsquo; is small data,
the &lsquo;<samp>dla $4,addr</samp>&rsquo; instruction above is equivalent to:
</p>
<div class="smallexample">
<pre class="smallexample">daddiu  $4,$28,%gp_rel(addr)
</pre></div>

<p>Small data is not supported for SVR4-style PIC.
</p>
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